by Freya North
‘I’ve been terribly naughty, Di.’
‘Oh, do tell!’ implored Diana, grasping Sally’s knee with mittened zeal but trying not to sound too keen. So Sally gave Diana an uncensored account in glorious Technicolor replete with close-ups. Though no detail of the action was neglected, she did, however, omit the underlying motive. There was no insinuation that this unbridled lust was driven by a carefully conceived plan. What Sally wanted was an approval of sorts, a ‘God, I wish I’d done that’. Diana did not disappoint her there.
‘This is the stuff of an airport groin-grinder! A veritable Jackie Collins bonk-buster. Wow!’
Sally was delighted. She did not expose the psychological bent of the situation, for not only did she fear the inevitable ‘It’ll only end in tears, someone’s bound to get hurt’, but fundamentally she wanted the fact that it was a calculated project kept all to herself.
Diana was quite exhausted when they arrived back at school.
When Sally arrived home she felt strangely depleted and a little anxious.
But I didn’t want him to see me like that. What can he think? Surely a true femme fatale wouldn’t go potty for penguins? She wouldn’t clap and squeal like a child. I don’t want to break the spell. I wonder if I have. He probably thought me quite sweet. I don’t want to be sweet, I want to be scandalous. He’s probably contemplating my merits as child-bearer and biscuit-baker this very moment. I must remedy the situation, reassert myself as a veritable vamp, a tough cookie, a steel butterfly. But how?
‘Hello, Richard?’
‘Sal! Enjoy the Zoo?’
‘Very much.’
‘Pop over?’
‘Now? Ten-thirty?’ Sally was in her red nightshirt (a present from Diana), fluffy green bed socks, an old tatty cotton scarf in her hair. ‘Sure,’ she purred, already scrambling out of her night clothes. She slipped on a black skirt and polo neck and declared to the African Violet that all was not lost. She hovered at her front door and then returned to her bedroom where she derobed and then dived back into her nightshirt. She drew the line at the socks and scarf, dabbed on a little perfume and slipped on her pumps. She covered up with her long trench coat, partly as protection against the drizzle, partly because what was underneath was for Richard alone.
It felt exciting to be going out when normally she would have been going to bed. But she also felt old and bemused, remembering how University nights would not yet have started. The roads were fairly empty and the traffic lights were on her side. She enjoyed hearing the fizzy whish made by wheels on the wet tarmac, seeing the sparkling orange flecks on the road cast by the street lights. It took less than twenty minutes, without breaking the speed limit or jumping amber lights, for Sally to arrive and park in Notting Hill where the bars were still throbbing and the bright young things would be enjoying tapas for a good while yet.
The lift in Richard’s building was old and cumbersome. The door had to be opened, the grille coaxed back then cranked closed, the floor selected with an assertive press and then an infuriating delay tolerated until the instructions registered. In the chug between ground and first floors, Sally had an idea. As first floor came and went, she unbuckled and unbuttoned her coat. By the time the lift was approaching the second floor, she had her nightshirt over her head. The lift stopped and so did Sally’s heart. But nothing happened and no one was there. Was the machinery trying to tell her something? It juddered on up and, for a delicious few seconds between the second and third floors, Sally stood completely naked.
The young lady who got out of the lift on the fourth floor smiled sweetly at the pizza delivery boy who got in. He watched her saunter down the hall and thought how well her long mac suited her. Sally’s knickers were still in the lift but he presumed them to be a handkerchief and, having recently recovered from a cold, he kept a clear distance. (They were discovered by the porter the next morning who sincerely hoped that nothing untoward had happened. In twenty-seven years he had never once had a pair of knickers lurking in this lift. Handkerchiefs and scarves maybe. Knickers, no. Mr Stonehill from Flat C tutted with him and said it was a disgrace.)
Richard answered the door, enveloped in his towelling robe. He kissed Sally on the cheek and before he had a chance to ask her more about the school trip, about her job, her colleague the elephant lover – all of which he was keen to know – Sally had pulled him towards her and nearly suffocated him with the deepest kiss imaginable. Her carrier bag fell to the floor and Richard’s penis soared skyward, pressing somewhat uncomfortably against the buckle on Sally’s coat.
Let’s undo that for starters.
Go on, Richard, unbelt me, unbuckle me, unbutton me, see what you can find. Richard had the belt off immediately and, still enmeshed in her kiss, he began to fumble with the buttons which were big but sat tight in their button holes.
I’m enjoying this! thought Sally.
I’m enjoying this! thought Richard.
When Richard had all the buttons undone, he slipped his hands under the lapels to push the coat away. Sally’s soft shoulders greeted him. What has she got on? he wondered, images of black lacy basques and cream, silky camisoles assaulting his mind while he glued his mouth to Sally’s and shut his eyes with the pressure of pleasure.
What has she got on? Nothing? Nothing! Goddo!
Sally felt the muscles of Richard’s lips break into a smile. She pulled her head back to look at him and he looked at her, naked, glorious and right there in his apartment. She raised her eyebrows in a cheeky quiver and he tutted before grabbing her towards him and planting a scorching kiss on her right breast.
They made love, there and then, by the door which was still ajar. Sally later had to take her mac to the dry cleaners. When she left at 7 a.m. Richard pressed a little paper bag into her hand before sending her to school with a kiss on the forehead, a nip on the lips and a smack on her bottom. In her rush to race home, shower, dress appropriately for a teacher and make it to assembly, Sally forgot about the packet until morning break. Sitting on the toilet, she unscrunched the bag and saw it had London Zoo and a tiger design emblazoned on the front. Out of it she tipped a small keyring. In the shape of a penguin.
ELEVEN
When can love begin? And can you fight it? When does love begin and when should it? But can you fight it?
Richard fell in love with Sally that morning at the Zoo. In a moment. He was as sure as his walk that he was in love with Sally Lomax. He felt peaceful and content about it. And happy. Secure. He didn’t bother to pontificate on what love is or should be, whether it was possible or realistic to feel love and know it after just a few meetings, meetings in which physical desire had, after all, played a dominant part. Sally had never stopped to think whether she might fall in love with Richard, too busy was she making sure that he didn’t fall in love with her but was instead subsumed by lust for her. Richard certainly lusted after her, but now he lusted out of love. Sally was blind to that love, she judged her happiness and success solely on the rigidity, endurance and explosion of his penis. Consequently, she completely neglected any exploration of her own subconscious, devoting all energy to new and invariably more outrageous seduction situations.
But, Sally, you are so lovable, togged up in your old Swan Lake tutu and turning up at Richard’s a mere two hours after you had left one Sunday night. Who could not love a girl who pulls her man into the ladies’ toilets to give him a blow job after an overlong Belgian film? Or guides his hand under her skirt beneath the table of a dinner party so he can discover she has on no panties. And Sally, your eyes are artless and provide a short cut into your soul; Richard has gazed at them, beyond them, often. Your smile is so full and real and alluring. He sees your face, Sally, in ecstatic rapture as you climax under him, on top of him, on his hand, on his mouth. He watches you and he feels he could burst with desire.
But he watches you when you do not know it. He observes you as you watch the News and he sees your face crease in anguish for war victims, for beached whales, for
families of the murdered, for the women who were raped. And he gazes at you for hours while you sleep, he watches you while you stare out of windows at nothing in particular. What he sees, he loves. Laughing at penguins. ‘Gracious Good Lord’. He sees the tears film over your eyes at the close of a play, the end of a film, as you finish a novel. Richard watches you all the while, but you don’t know it. Richard is in love with you but you don’t see it. You will, you will. And then how will you feel?
Richard wanted to sing his joy from the roof-tops, to swing from the steeple and proclaim it, to climb trees and laud it. Instead, he informed Bob quite casually over their customary post-workout swift half.
‘Where are you spending Christmas? Want to come for lunch? We’re also having a New Year’s Eve bash, can’t decide whether to have a theme or not. You know, come as a painting, come as a film. I could just see you as a Degas ballerina!’
‘I am in love with Sally Lomax.’
‘And he just said it, no prompting?’
‘He just came right out with it, I hadn’t even mentioned her.’
Bob had ensured that it had indeed been a true and very swift half indeed and not the usual excuse for a two-pinter.
He could not wait to tell Catherine. It really was ground-breaking news. It really was the most extraordinary occurrence.
Richard is in love. Gracious, old Richie boy in love and declaring it. No more ‘she’s all right’s, now it’s ‘she’s the one’. He’s found her! At long bloody last, he’s found her. And he seems so sure. And he seems, well, just so bloody happy! And I knew it, I knew it, didn’t I? I could see it a mile and a half off and now he can see it too and he’s as happy as fucking Larry.
Outwardly, Catherine was delighted. Secretly she was just a little dismayed. It had been nice to have Richard generally unattached, to know that she was perhaps the most important woman in his life. She loved it that he spent much of his time with them, being charming, good-looking – and hers, in a way. For as long as she had known him, he had never been short of female attention. He had always brought them over to Catherine and Bob’s for Catherine to dissect later over a lengthy phone call. And when such liaisons had inevitably come to grief, he had always enjoyed a healthy post mortem with her. They exchanged Vogue for GQ. They often lunched together and shopped together – Richard provided the perfect mannequin for Catherine to outfit her shop-shy husband. For Catherine, Richard was the older brother she never had, and for whom she would gladly swap her younger one (whose passions were fired almost solely by motorbikes). Now Richard was in love and intuition told her it very well might be The One. Sally Lomax she liked though she was but a friend of a friend’s. Catherine was inquisitive to see if Richard-in-Love differed in any fundamental way from the Richard she knew and adored.
‘Let’s have them to dinner. No, how about Sunday lunch? This Sunday. Go on, Bob, phone. Phone now!’
And so the four of them lunched together on Sunday, and on other Sundays. They all dined at Richard’s too, and went to the theatre, and walked on Kenwood, and went to exhibitions at the Serpentine. They decided together that the New Year’s Eve party would be a masked ball. Sally conspired with Catherine to make their outfits on her sewing machine and, with inordinate pleasure, they refused to help the men in any way with theirs. The women became more than the partners of their partners, they became friends. Catherine was delighted that Richard was just the same only more so, more animated, more charming, happier than ever she had known him. Bob liked Sally but rarely spoke to her one to one. Sally didn’t really notice Bob, Richard was her project, he was not. The more time the four of them spent together, the more Richard spoke to Bob in private about Sally. But he never told Sally. He never said the ‘L’ word to her though he used it frequently with Bob. The word was never empty but always saturated with conviction.
Sally called him Richie, and to him Sally was Sal. Bob and Catherine never tired of shooting each other knowing smiles and conspiratorially raised eyebrows when these diminutives, forbidden to all others, were used. Catherine tried using it once with Richard but his wince was sharp. Richard would remain Richie to Sally alone.
Diana too was let into their cocoon. Or rather they into her black and red one. Evenings of macro-biotic food, ambient music and good grass became almost a weekly institution in the run-up to Christmas. Invariably it was a Monday night, serving as a boost for the architect and two teachers for the week ahead. Richard and Sally would lie sprawled on the black, sagging couch, watching Diana gesticulating vividly from the depths of the voluminous red bean-bag, listening with mirth to her many tales – some true, some surely not, who cared? They would wend a weary way home to Sally’s, make love lazily and then embrace a stoned slumber, to awake amazingly refreshed and energetic to continue their working weeks.
Sally grew fonder of Diana and loved to hear her describing Richard, admiring his statuesque body, his composed but agreeable person. ‘Marvellous teeth and beautiful nails, prerequistes you know, prerequisites.’ Sally often granted Diana an insight into their sex life – something Richard never gave Bob. The women would sit in a corner of the drab staff-room and fill it with colourful laughter. Sally loved to see Diana reel back in awe and delight. It made her feel proud. Sometimes Sally’s account was deliciously bawdy, sometimes downright scientific. Mostly, she recalled their couplings so eloquently and with such passion that Diana’s eyes watered and she was rendered anomalously speechless. Occasionally, she even suggested little bed-time tricks and Sally could not wait to tell her the effect they had had. These were the machinations of Diana’s increasingly warped imagination – she had not tried them out. She wouldn’t dare. Anyway, on whom? The live yoghurt was completely unsuccessful, the raw cake mixture downright messy, but the carefully proportioned mix of orange juice and just a little olive oil (extra virgin, cold-pressed) was a gem of Diana’s for which Sally became eternally grateful.
But Sally never mentioned the ‘L’ word. Sally didn’t know anything about it. ‘L’ for what? Yet Diana, gifted with some intrinsic insight, could see it. She quietly made notes of their body language, the way that Sally so comfortably welded to Richard on the sofa. She observed how attentive Sally became when Richard was speaking, how she laughed more strongly if Richard laughed, how she watched him and not Diana when the other two spoke. And Diana saw how Sally would touch Richard somewhere, anywhere, if he got up. And how she’d slip her hand around the top of his thigh as he led her out at the end of an evening, his arm about her waist. And Diana felt Sally glower when, on one occasion, she called her Sal. Richard witnessed this and his head buzzed.
Though the pair of them now shared themselves with their trusted friends, they spent much time locked into each other. They walked and they talked, they sat together in communicative silence; they enjoyed each other’s company as normal couples do. The Heath or Holland Park were favourite stamping grounds. Sometimes they visited briefly just to feed the ducks; at other times they marched round these urban swathes of green, lost and deep in intimate conversation. When Richard spoke of his late father, of his childhood, Sally brimmed with tenderness and support. When he talked of his work, she concentrated hard. Now when she was out and about she didn’t restrict her sight to eye-level but conscientiously looked up and around and noted pediments and architraves, Corinthian capitals and original window glass in the most unlikely of buildings. Sally talked, too, but carefully. Richard understood her childhood to have been happy, her previous relationships to have been few, fairly short-term and unsuccessful.
‘Why unsuccessful? In what way? Have you been hurt?’
‘I have never been in love.’
Her love was her work, he decided, for on that subject she became animated and spoke so descriptively about her pupils, past and present, that Richard formed a clear picture of each. She spoke with great fondness of her friends, who were few but to whom she was devoted though they lived as far afield as Ireland and South Africa. She talked of her passion for ballet an
d what she deemed to be her failure – weak knees. She danced for him on Hampstead Heath in her wellingtons, quickly, lightly, and, he believed, perfectly.
But such walks, talks and insights always finished with passionate love-making, more often than not at Sally’s instigation. For Richard, this sealed such days, for Sally it was a necessity. Just in case.
Just in case he loses sight of what I am, the extraordinary lover I must be.
You mean, just in case this mere rampant fling should dare to transmute into something quite other.
And hasn’t it?
Their love-making was as exciting and as satisfying as it had ever been. The physical peaks that they reached were a revelation, and an exquisite one. But a spiritual element crept in, silently, unannounced and uninvited. It was inevitable. And it was welcome. They looked at each other more while they were making love. They were able to penetrate deeper. And though Sally did not necessarily look at and into Richard with love, she did look at him as Sally, as herself. And he saw that. She liked to gaze at him. She wasn’t entirely sure why.
Maybe my funny old shyness has gone.
Maybe, Sally, maybe. But perhaps there’s something else you ought to consider. When you’re ready.
TWELVE
On New Year’s Eve, when Richard told Sally that he loved her, her world fell apart. It crashed about her feet in a deluge of shattered hopes and splintered desires. Ruined ambition lay smattered about her.
‘Merry Christmas, Miss Lomax!’
‘Merry Christmas, everyone. Now remember, the coach leaves for Paris from school at five in the morning on January the fourth. Remember too that we will be away for five days so bring enough underwear and any medication. And I want you all to prepare a piece on one figure of French History – painter, King or Emperor, whoever. Oh, and no hand-held computer games.’